*Inspectors, known as "the suits" by the women, routinely checked conditions complied with rules for factories.

*Government paid welfare to certain women in laundries, along with payments for services.

*Women were also enabled to leave laundries if they moved to other state-run institutions such as psychiatric hospitals, county and city homes and in the company of police, probation, court or prison officers.

*The state also had a role in registering the death of a woman in a laundry.

Survivors have been campaigning for the last 10 years for an apology from state and church and a transparent compensation scheme.

Religious orders the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity ran laundries at Drumcondra and Sean MacDermott Street in Dublin, the Sisters of Mercy in Galway and Dun Laoghaire, the Religious Sisters of Charity in Donnybrook, Dublin, and Cork, and the Sisters of the Good Shepherd in Limerick, Cork, Waterford and New Ross.

The last laundry, Sean MacDermott Street in Dublin's north inner city, closed in 1996.

Justice for Magdalenes (JFM), an advocacy group, said it is aware of at least 988 women who are buried in laundry plots in cemeteries across Ireland and therefore must have stayed for life.

The inquiry could only certify 879.

The Taoiseach said action should have been taken before to clear the names and reputations of the women put to work in the institutions.

"That the stigma, that the branding together of the residents, all 10,000 needs to be removed and should have been removed long before this and I'm really sorry that that never happened, and I regret that never happened," Mr Kenny said.

"I'm sorry that this release of pressure and understanding of so many of those women was not done before this, because they were branded as being the fallen women, as they were referred to in this state."

Survivors quickly rejected the Taoiseach's apology, and demanded a fuller and more frank admission from government and the religious orders involved.

"He is the Taoiseach of our country, he is the Taoiseach of the Irish people, and that is not a proper apology."

Mary Smyth said she endured inhumane conditions in a laundry, which she said was worse than being in prison.

"I will go to the grave with what happened. It will never ever leave me," said Ms Smyth, also of the group.

The Justice for Magdalenes group, which has collected testimony from survivors who attest to severe psychological and physical suffering even in stays of less than a year, has been leading campaigns for an apology.

"It can no longer be claimed that these institutions were private and that 'the vast majority' of the girls and women entered voluntarily as has been claimed by former minister Batt O'Keeffe and testimony before the UN Committee Against Torture given by Sean Aylward, the former secretary general of the Department of Justice," the group said.

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